et non sapientior

Category: Politics

The Democratic author of Iran sanctions measures that have drawn ire from the Obama administration took aim at his critics and embraced his allies in a passionate address before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, also took a dig at National Security Advisor Susan Rice as he rallied the conference crowd in the speaking slot after the administration official.

“I take issue with those who say the prime minister’s visit to the United States is ‘destructive’ to U.S.-Israel relations,” Menendez said. Rice made such comments in an interview with PBS aired last week.

“And tomorrow I will be proud when I escort Prime Minister Netanyahu to the House Chamber to give his speech,” he continued. “To show him the respect he deserves from every American who cares about our relationship with the only true democracy in the Middle East.”

The senator stressed that “when it comes to defending the U.S.-Israel relationship, I am not intimidated by anyone — not Israel’s political enemies, and not by my political friends when I believe they’re wrong.”

Menendez noted the “political timing” of Netanyahu’s speech “may have been unfortunate,” but British Prime Minister David Cameron of Great Britain came to Washington in January to lobby Congress against Iran sanctions.

“It seems to me that if it’s okay for one prime minister to express his views, it should be good for all prime ministers,” he said.

Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot to death in central Moscow late Friday.

The head of the Moscow police department is on the scene, according to TASS news agency. Moscow police sources say there were witnesses to the shooting who are now being questioned.
“Today at approximately 11:15 PM Nemtsov was walking with a female companion along the Bolshoy Kamenniy bridge. A car approached, from which several shots were fired. Four shots hit Nemtsov in the back,” Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Elena Alekseeva said.

…Nemtsov was 55 years old. He was a former deputy prime minister in the Russian government under President Boris Yeltsin. At one point he was considered a likely presidential candidate. After Vladimir Putin became the country’s president, Nemtsov actively criticized the administration and its policies.

CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will take on Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in the first mayoral runoff election in Chicago history on April 7.
A fiery Garcia, who finished second to Emanuel, criticized Emanuel on catering to special interests and failing to do enough on crime an education in a speech to his supporters at the Alhambra Palace in the West Loop.

Crime an education.

Yep, layers and layers of editors and fact-checkers.

It will be nice to see Rahm crawl back into the fetid little sewer he came out of.

…The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

Via our dear friend Tim, who shows us that once again that “Utopia” is but Latin for “nightmare”

That’s one explanation: that no sane person shouts, ‘Stuff your pension!’ and clears off to a field near Inverness. Another is that designs for living always end in tears, or worse. From the Russian Revolution to Jonestown, programmes for human happiness come a cropper. It’s best to muddle along as we are, not because human beings are morons or suckers, or traitors to the cause, but because life is meant to be messy, muddled, contrary, comic. In any event, when the balloon goes up, I have my plan ready. I shall hide in the stockroom at Morrison’s (Strood branch), spending what’s left of eternity scoffing their individual fruit pies.

Read the whole delusional, pathetic, and tragi-comic tale. Keep it in mind every time some Government Expert or PhD-wielding Academic insists that we all must follow their path to Enlightenment.

On the street corner where Copenhagen’s Islamist gunman died in a shoot-out with police, his friends laid floral tributes in his memory on Monday.
Emulating the actions of the hundreds of people who left flowers outside a café and a synagogue two men were shot dead at the weekend, those who regard Omar el-Hussein as a “good guy”, not a terrorist, created a third shrine.

…”We’ve put flowers here because we must remember him,” said a young Arab man, who gave his name as Mohamed. “He was a good guy. We don’t believe he did anything wrong. It wasn’t like the police say.” A placard placed with the flowers read: “May Allah be merciful, rest in peace” in both Arabic and Danish.

…“He wasn’t someone who could kill people. He stabbed a guy, OK, but it was only in the leg,” Benny said. “When we fight, we stab, but always in the leg, not to kill. I’ve stabbed ten or eleven people. I know he didn’t have the money to buy an automatic gun. Here it costs 50,000 kroner (nearly £5,000).”

After a Danish movie director at a seminar on “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” and a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue were shot dead in Copenhagen, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark, uttered a familiar trope:

“We are not in the middle of a battle between Islam and the West. It’s not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s a battle between values based on the freedom of the individual and a dark ideology.”

This statement — with its echoes of President Obama’s vague references to “violent extremists” uncoupled from the fundamentalist Islam to which said throat-cutting extremists pledge allegiance — scarcely stands up to scrutiny.

I mean, really, what kind of a wimp needs a AUMF to fight the JV team?

President Obama’s request that Congress authorize military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was met with skepticism from both parties on Wednesday, raising questions about Capitol Hill’s ability to pass a war measure.

The divide is largely centered on language prohibiting the use of “enduring offensive ground combat operations” against ISIS.

Democrats say this does too little to limit the White House from committing ground troops to the fight, while Republicans say the restrictions could handcuff the military.

How those views can possibly be reconciled isn’t clear, even with Obama using his bully pulpit to call on Washington to unify against what he said was a “barbaric” terrorist network.

The Wunderkinds at State leap into the Random Fray with their usual high standards of expertise

It leaves one aghast, it really does.

A known radical Muslim terrorist goes into a Kosher store, and it was a store, not a deli, which is an important distinction as lots of non-jews will stop in for some corned beef and pickles but if you want to be sure to have a nearly 100% jewish clientele a kosher store is the spot. Anyhow, to claim with a straight face that this was some random attack, equal to say getting hit by an asteroid as one walks down the street and not a clear case of a radical muslim terrorist looking specifically to kill Jews, well, it simply beggars belief.

It is entirely legitimate for, uh, the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a buncha, uh… violent, vicious zealots, uh, who behead people or randomly shoot… uh… a buncha folks, uh, in a, in a deli in Paris. Uh…

The refusal to say what is plainly going on is either a sign of craven cowardice or an endorsement of it.

It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”

But in Paris, this particular iteration of the popular inscription—here, created by the street artist Combo, who also pasted a life-size photo of himself next to it—didn’t go down well with everybody. Le Monde reports that four young people asked the artist to remove it last weekend, and beat him up severely when he refused to do so.

The Greek prime minister also repeated demands that Germany – Greece’s biggest creditor – pay reparations for World War Two and repay a loan that the Nazis forced the Bank of Greece to pay when they occupied Greece.

I really really do. It is catnip for Lefties to make those nasty snap remarks that show how they truly feel, how they denigrate others and they finally are getting caught at it.

Case in point: President Christina Kirchner of Argentina, who is in China to beg the Chinese to loan her bankrupt philosophy country billions of dollars, couldn’t resist sending out a Tweet mocking Asian accents

(Bloomberg) — China’s social media users turned on visiting Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in outrage, derision and to demand an apology after she published a Twitter post mocking the Chinese accent.
Fernandez replaced r’s with l’s in the tweet after she met with Chinese business leaders in Beijing during a trip aimed at raising investment in the recession-hit South American economy. “Did they only come for lice and petloleum?” Fernandez wrote in Spanish on her Twitter account yesterday, before saying “Sorry” a minute in a separate post a minute later.

…there’s quite a set of huevos in the Middle East. Abdullah’s pissed and, as we say in the Corps when things’re fixin’ to blow: ISIS better stand the f*ck by…

After ISIS execution, angry King Abdullah quotes Clint Eastwood to U.S. lawmakers

…”He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king. “He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”

Hunter would not say which part of “Unforgiven” the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood’s character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution. There is a scene in the picture in which Eastwood’s character, William Munny, says,

“Any man I see out there, I’m gonna kill him. Any son of a bitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only going to kill him, I’m going to kill his wife and all his friends and burn his damn house down.”

And, yes ~ something with MASSIVE KUDOS for Michelle Obama REALLY did just come out of my computer.

She met the Saudis with her gum-chewing, bow-prone husband yesterday…IN PANTS AND UNCOVERED. About frickin’ damn time SOME AMERICAN woman stood as unswathed instead of looking (as Ebola put it) like “a Sherpa heading upmountain”.

For the first time in my life, I’m actually PROUD of our First Lady.

Michelle Obama navigates limits on women in Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — For first lady Michelle Obama, just a few hours in Saudi Arabia were enough to illustrate the stark limitations under which Saudi women live.

Joining President Barack Obama for a condolence visit after the death of the King Abdullah, Mrs. Obama stepped off of Air Force One wearing long pants and a long, brightly colored jacket — but no headscarf.